


Come Back in Tears

by Hlessi



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Consent Issues, Cultural Differences, Dubious Consent, Heavy Angst, Hobbit Culture, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M, Major Character Injury, as Big Folk reckon it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 22:05:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2204712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hlessi/pseuds/Hlessi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He must have been wonderful, before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Back in Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Response to [this prompt](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/8973.html?thread=19999245#t19999245) over at the Hobbit Kink Meme.

He wakes some mornings with the memory that came with sleep still before his eyes or in his ears or on his tongue. A green hill in the sunlight. A sip of something bitter and milky. A lullaby hummed under the breath. A woman's smiling face, her dark hair and her dark eyes. A pipe with a stem notched by familiar teeth, and a fragrant, smoky breath. A round green door.

This morning he wakes to find he's bloomed again. There are white petals and smears of pollen all over the pillow. His head when he lifts it feels heavy, and he is so hungry that it's as if a hole has opened in his stomach.

The Dwarf sighs.

 

The Dwarf lights candles for him. Fat candles in fat glass lamps with slivers of silvered mirror fitted into the backs. The Dwarf replaces candles that have melted away in the night and wipes off the spattered wax. The light dims and brightens wherever the Dwarf goes.

Then the Dwarf helps him bathe.

He likes the bath. He likes it warm, not cold or hot but only just warmer than his own skin. He likes being able to sit in it, likes having the water up to his chin so that as much of him is submerged as the Dwarf will allow. He has to be careful. Once he let himself slip down, so that the water covered his neck, and then his chin, and then his nose, and then his ears, and then the Dwarf caught him by the hair and pulled him out of the water, right out of the bath. The Dwarf shouted at him. The Dwarf shook him until all the petals fell from his hair and only the buds were left. Then the Dwarf held him and cried.

He has to be careful.

The surface of the water is thick with petals when he's washed away the sleep, the sweat, the love. He tries not to look at his feet, but he cannot avoid feeling the hairlessness, which makes him sick. He tries not to look at them. The Dwarf washes his back for him, and then he washes the Dwarf's. Sometimes the Dwarf will want him to sit in the Dwarf's lap, and then he tucks his head against the Dwarf's round ear and feels the weight of the Dwarf's wet hair against his face. He closes his eyes and feels how it covers him.

The Dwarf likes to dress him. He stands there by the bed and lets the Dwarf pull a shirt over his head, smalls and trousers over his legs, another shirt and then a coat. These clothes are heavy, but he likes the weight of them. He likes less the other things the Dwarf tries to put on him—rings, arm-bands, necklaces, a circlet. They're all heavy in the wrong way. They seem to pull him down and lock him into place. But he knows the Dwarf likes it, and he's realized that a willingness to wear clothes and jewellery is seen as a sign that he is getting better. So he endures it.

The Dwarf sings to him while he brushes the Dwarf's hair. He likes that. The Dwarf has a good voice. It calms him.

The Dwarf says that when he is better, he can braid the Dwarf's hair too. Not just brush it. He can't do it now because his fingers are so clumsy. He always tangles the Dwarf's hair when he tries. But when he's better, he can do the braids. The Dwarf says it's his right.

Then, when they're both dressed and the Dwarf's hair is brushed and the Dwarf is wearing braids and jewels, the Dwarf takes his hands.

“I am in council today,” says the Dwarf. “Where will you take your meals?”

His heart leaps into the back of his throat. He tries not to let this show in his face. This is one of _those_ questions. “Oh, I don't know.” He tries to seem unconcerned. It's important that he doesn't seem afraid. “I suppose I'll see how I feel. Perhaps company would do me some good.”

The Dwarf smiles. He smiles back. “Then I will see you tonight, my burglar,” says the Dwarf. The Dwarf bends forward and kisses him, a soft, ticklish kiss. A petal floats into the Dwarf's hair.

The chamber always feels so much larger when the Dwarf isn't there. He walks around the chamber, touching the glass lamps by their silver bases. He picks up a lamp and goes to look in the bath, but the Dwarf did not forget to drain the water before leaving. He doesn't know the trick of filling the bath again, the Dwarf hasn't told him. Then he takes the lamp back into the larger chamber, treading over the petals that have fallen in his wake, and he sets the lamp down on a table covered in books.

He goes to the bed and takes up a blanket. It's woven from goat's hair and light but warm. The Dwarf gave it to him as a special present. The Dwarf said that the Dwarf's wife wove it just for him.

He wraps one end of it over his shoulder and then he lies down on the bed and rolls himself into it.

 

There was a bear, once. A big, snoring bear, lying on her side. He shook the snow from his hair and crawled up against her. The two smaller bears nipped at him, but then they got used to his smell and let him be. They curled up on either side of him and they slept. His feet hurt him immensely as they thawed.

He woke, once, to the bear snuffling at him. She examined him from head to toe with her nose and grumbled at him. Then she smelled the blooms on his head, and used her big, raspy tongue to lick the rose hips from his hair.

When the Men came, she roared and she stood and she died on the spears.

 

There's knocking. At the door. There's knocking at the door.

He gasps in the soft dark of the blanket. He rolls himself free with a jerk of his shoulders, rolls out of the blanket and right off the bed. Petals scatter everywhere. He stands beside the bed and straightens his clothes, his jewellery, his hair. He brushes petals off of the bed.

He goes to the door and it is the Dwarf.

“Afternoon, Bilbo,” says the Dwarf, squinting.

“Good afternoon,” he says back.

“Had it from the King that ye were up today,” says the Dwarf. “Well, I thought ye might like some of your tea.”

_My tea_ , he thinks. “Oh yes,” he says, “tea would be lovely.”

The Dwarf steps back. He realizes only then that when the Dwarf offered tea, the Dwarf meant that he should come to tea, not that tea should come to him. Behind the Dwarf the darkness yawns. The open door is a black hole but for the Dwarf, and he trembles inside of himself to think he must go into it now.

Because he must, he understands. If he does not, the Dwarf will think he is getting worse. He can't get worse. He must get better. He can't go outside until he gets better.

“Oh yes,” he says, and goes to get his special lamp.

The Dwarf gave him his special lamp. It's also glass but coloured, so that the light from the candle comes out a dull red. The red light helps him see while not hurting anyone else. The Dwarf says that he has weak eyes because he is not well and because he grew up on the surface, but this is not so for everyone. That's why he is the only one who has this special lamp. The lamp tells everyone who he is and that they must understand when he does silly things like walk into them or stumble over nothing.

The lamp's base is moulded into the shape of an opening flower. The Dwarf said that was just for him.

He takes his flower lamp and lights the candle in it, and then he goes back to the door. The Dwarf has gotten even farther away, he thinks because it is so bright in the chamber.

“All right, Bilbo?” asks the Dwarf.

“Oh yes,” he says, and he hangs his flower lamp from his belt before he goes into the dark.

 

Father had a spear. Father killed the two small bears, and then Father came to him and said _A lad!_

Father picked him up. Father tutted over his ruined feet. Father wrapped him in a coat and carried him out.

_I told you there were no grave robbers here,_ Father said. _Any fool mad enough to outrage a dwarven tomb is on the other side of the Rhun by now. The trail must have been the poor lad's._

 

His flower lamp tells people who he is. Before the lamp, there was so much fuss. The Dwarf was always walking into him. The Dwarf was always turning around and then jumping away, shouting. The Dwarf would drop things when he spoke, and then the Dwarf would curse until he was trembling.

Things are different with the flower lamp. Now he can see where he's going, and the Dwarf never shouts at him. Sometimes he hears the Dwarf saying, up ahead as he approaches, _Quiet, it's the hobbit._ Sometimes the Dwarf whispers, when the Dwarf thinks he can't hear, _T'would have been kinder if the battle had done for 'im._ And, once, only once, the Dwarf hissed, as he went by, _I don't know how Thrain's son can stand it._

The Dwarf looks back at him. “All right, Bilbo?”

“Oh yes,” he answers.

Finally they come to a short arch of blue stone, and he's relieved to see that it's the smaller dining hall, not the larger. The larger dining hall was a disaster, a humiliating ordeal. He's not prepared to try again.

When he steps into the smaller dining hall, the Dwarf looks up from the table and smiles at him. “Bilbo!”

The Dwarf stands up. “Bilbo, you look well.”

He hesitates. He smiles. “Hello. Thank you.”

The Dwarf takes his arm and brings him to the bench, where he sits. A bloom fall from his hair and onto the table, and there's an awkward moment before the Dwarf brushes it off onto the floor.

“Thorin said you'd come,” says the Dwarf, “and Bombur sent up a few things. Er, just to warn you, I don't think he really knows what tea cakes are...”

“And neither do we,” the Dwarf says, “but these look like they might be called tea cakes. Somewhere.”

“And here, Bifur made this, he's good with copper. Nori says it's a tea service, but don't ask me how he knows.”

“Are ye still full from the midday, Bilbo? If ye are, ye can take these back with you.”

He feels dazed almost senseless, but he hears in the Dwarf's voice that he has been quiet too long and should be doing something. “Oh no,” he says, and picks up a tea cake. “This is very nice.”

The Dwarf is fooling with the tea service and doesn't seem to realize that the water should have been heated before being poured into the pot. Then the Dwarf tries to snatch the pot away and there is squabbling. The Dwarf is drinking from a mug which does not have tea in and the Dwarf winks at him from under the Dwarf's hat. The red light from his flower lamp is a reassuring gleam beside him, a little star under the table. He nibbles and chews the cake in his hand, which his stomach does not want. He drinks his tea, for which he is not thirsty. He must eat and drink. People who are well eat and drink. His jewellery is very uncomfortable, and he wishes he could take it off.

The Dwarf looks at him from the corner of the Dwarf's eye, but he feigns not to see. At least chewing and drinking means he does not need to talk.

He reaches for his lukewarm tea and smiles for the Dwarf.

 

Father took him to Mother. Mother held his poor feet in her hands. Mother helped him bathe in warm water, wrapped him in a blanket and his feet in clean cloths, and fed him gruel.

_Poor child,_ she kept saying. _Poor child._

_Luck child,_ said Father, _to be found now. If the snows had come sooner he'd have starved if he hadn't been eaten. The Bowman says we're not to go back out. Any grave robber is gone, and if he's not he'll freeze._

_Do you think that's it, Jon?_ asked Mother. _Could whoever it was that disturbed the grave have stolen this boy from somewhere?_

_Suppose he could have,_ said Father. _Anyone mad or desperate enough to break open that tomb could do anything._

 

Somewhere behind him, stone grates against stone.

He doesn't know where he is or what he's doing or even who he is until someone takes his hand. “Bilbo,” says the Dwarf, and takes his left hand. “Bilbo,” says the Dwarf, and takes his right hand. He doesn't know he's trembling until his hands are being held and he has their stillness to compare to, and then he knows that he's shaking like a leaf in the wind. _Leaf,_ he thinks. _Wind,_ he thinks.

“Oh, lad,” says the Dwarf, and two big hands, rough and tender, take his face between them.

Someone is whispering _I can't get out I can't get out I can't get out_ he doesn't know that it's him until the Dwarf beside him says “You're safe, Bilbo. You're safe.”

The hands leave his face. “Oh, lad,” the Dwarf says.

The Dwarf says, “Bring more light,” and then there's more light. The brightness helps him breathe, it helps him see that he is not in the ground, but he _is_ in the ground, and so he turns to the Dwarf at his side and he begs “Please can I go outside, please let me go outside, I promise I won't run away again, can I go outside—”

The Dwarf holds him, the Dwarf pets his hair, the Dwarf pats his back, the Dwarf won't let him go outside and he knows this without being told. “Not now,” says the Dwarf, “you can't right now, you—you're not well, Bilbo, it's—I—oh Mahal—Fili, can't we—”

“We can't,” says the Dwarf. “You remember what happened last time.”

“Someone should get Thorin,” says the Dwarf.

The Dwarf brings him to a chair and puts him in it, and the Dwarf gives him another, larger lamp and holding it helps him calm, it reminds him where he's not. The walls are far away, the ceiling is very high, there is no lid and he can get up and walk about if he wants. He realizes that petals are dropping from his hair when he looks down and there's a pile of them that almost conceal his ugly feet.

_He'll think I've gotten worse again,_ it occurs to him. He straightens his back and lifts his chin, and he makes himself say, “Oh dear, I'm so sorry. I don't mean to be such trouble.”

The Dwarf says, “No, Bilbo.”

“You're no trouble, Bilbo,” says the Dwarf.

_I must say something sensible,_ he thinks. “It was only—the sound, you know, stone and stone, and I—I think it reminded me, and I...but I'm fine now.”

The Dwarf looks at him.

“In fact,” he says. “I feel quite well. Much better.” He must be convincing. “I promise.”

The Dwarf does not speak.

The Dwarf has said that he can't go outside, but he doesn't want to stay there. He's had too much of this for now. He says, “Can't I go back to the room?”

The Dwarf's face is sad. “Back to your room, Bilbo?”

“Yes, please,” he says, and the Dwarf nods. He stands, and hands the larger lamp back to the Dwarf. He touches his flower lamp to make certain it's still there.

 

Mother made over an old coat of Father's for him. She sewed on new buttons and a hood for his pointed ears, which were always cold. When his feet were better, she went out and came back with a pair of boots that fit him well, though he did not like them much.

He followed her around the house helping her with things. This seemed to make her happy. The neighbours said that it was just as if he were her own boy. He helped where he could, wiping crockery, handing her pins, holding the thread, winding the wool, covering the herb garden before the frost. Mother began calling him Little Sven. Father asked him didn't he miss his parents, and he said he didn't know. _Poor lad,_ said Father.

Then his hair bloomed.

Mother and Father stared. They stood in the corner and would not come near.

_He's a changeling,_ said Father, his voice shaking.

_He's just a boy,_ said Mother, but not as if she believed it.

They left him in the house while they went to get help. Mother would have stayed, but Father would not let her. He sat by the fire trying to pull his hood up over the flowers, which had already begun to wilt in the cold.

When Mother and Father came back they brought Bard, who knew him at once.

 

The Dwarf takes him back to the room, which is bright as day after the shadowy halls. The Dwarf leaves him at the door. The Dwarf tries to embrace him, and he tries not to see the hurt in the Dwarf's face when he endures rather than returns.

He puts his flower lamp down on the table with the books. He takes off his jewellery, the rings, arm-bands, necklaces, and circlet. Petals flutter to the floor. Then he picks up his woollen blanket and goes into the bath, where it is dim but not dark.

He gets into the dry bath, wraps himself in his blanket, and then he lies down.

It doesn't feel quite right. That is a stupid thing to think, he knows, because he's doing a very silly thing, lying clothed and wrapped in a blanket in the bath in the dark. If the Dwarf should see him the Dwarf would think he was getting much worse. But still he lies there, breathing slowly, eyes closed, blanket clutched close. The stone chills him through the blanket and his clothes. That is wrong. It should not be cold. It should not be hot but it should not be cold.

He pulls the blanket over his face and tries.

 

The Dwarf came at once.

He was terribly frightened. There was shouting, and thumping footsteps, and then the door burst open. The Dwarf stood there, staring, long, greying black hair a storm and cold blue eyes sunken into an ageing face. The Dwarf wore armour and a very large sword.

_Bilbo,_ said the Dwarf. The Dwarf's voice was as rusty as an old hinge. There was white in the Dwarf's beard. _Bilbo._

Then the Dwarf lunged forward and seized him by his wrist. The Dwarf didn't seem to notice when he cried out and struggled. The Dwarf pulled him near enough for the Dwarf's bearded mouth to scrape his face and he almost fainted when the Dwarf's arms closed on him. Then his voice died in his throat and he could do nothing but hang there in the Dwarf's grip, silent and trembling.

The Dwarf didn't seem to mind the flowers.

 

He wakes when he feels himself being lifted.

“Hush,” says the Dwarf. The Dwarf's breath smells of mead. The Dwarf tucks him under the Dwarf's beard and then he's carried out of the bath, back into the lighted chamber. It's not as bright; many of the candles have gone out.

The Dwarf sits down on the edge of the bed. The Dwarf holds him, saying nothing. He peeks up over the Dwarf's beard, but the Dwarf isn't looking at him.

_Poor Dwarf,_ he thinks, not for the first time. The Dwarf looks tired. The Dwarf's hair is greying and there's more white in the Dwarf's beard every day. He thinks maybe it's like his flowers. He's noticed that the flowers are blooming less and less often, and wilting more and more quickly. He thinks that maybe that means something important, something like the spreading white at the Dwarf's temples.

He wishes there was something he could do for the Dwarf. Something to make this easier. But there's only one thing he can do, and it won't make anything easier.

He reaches up and combs his fingers through the Dwarf's beard.

He does this for a while. Little by little, the stiffness leaves the Dwarf's shoulders. The lines soften around the Dwarf's eyes, the Dwarf's mouth. The Dwarf's hands loosen on his shoulder and hip. When the Dwarf looks down at him, the Dwarf's eyes are not so dull or distant.

“My sister-sons tell me you were unwell today,” says the Dwarf.

He does not stop petting. “I had a bad moment,” he says. “That's all.”

The Dwarf sighs, blowing mead fumes into his face. “They say you are not eating.”

He has to be careful. The Dwarf has proved that if the Dwarf thinks he's not eating on his own, the Dwarf will feed him with the Dwarf's own hands to make sure. The Dwarf will set a schedule. “I didn't have much of an appetite today. I'll do better tomorrow.” _Please don't ask me what I did today,_ he thinks.

The Dwarf's eyes close. The Dwarf's head tilts so that he can reach the Dwarf's jaw and neck. “You were in the bath again.”

To that, he can think of nothing to say. Nothing that won't upset the Dwarf. So he says nothing, but he sits up a bit and reaches up to rub the back of the Dwarf's head and neck through his hair.

The Dwarf groans. The blanket slips to the floor. He sits astride the Dwarf's leg and feels the Dwarf's arousal against his own.

The Dwarf undresses him carefully. There's no mention of the missing jewellery. Coat and shirt off his shoulders, and then his trousers. When he's in smalls and second shirt, the Dwarf shifts him onto the bed, onto his back. The shirt is worked over his blooming hair so gently. When the smalls come off, the Dwarf bites each hips as it's exposed.

The Dwarf undresses as if the Dwarf is going to battle. Off come mantle and coat, belts and innumerable jewels. Boots thump to the floor, and then shirts and trousers. Underclothes are almost ripped off, the heavy ring removed, and then the Dwarf is naked, huge and hairy, scarred and erect. When the Dwarf kneels onto the bed, the weight of the Dwarf lowering over him is as if the mountain was settling atop him.

The Dwarf is a little rough with him tonight. This makes him think the Dwarf is more upset with him than the Dwarf let on. He yields to it without complaint, even when the kisses are abrupt and short-lived and the Dwarf reaches for the oil sooner rather than later. The Dwarf's fingers are impatient but he bears it, even when it is briefly painful and he can't help whimpering. His legs are spread wide and his hips lifted off the bed.

The Dwarf pants and pushes between his legs. There are a few moments of sharp discomfort, especially when the Dwarf will not give him time, but this is a thing his body knows to do, now. It doesn't resist the intrusion long. The pain passes, and the Dwarf lies forward until greying black hair covers his face and the Dwarf is groaning into his neck. Then the Dwarf is so busy with taking him that he can let his eyes wander and pay as much or as little attention as he pleases.

He doesn't resent the Dwarf's having him. If he feels anything he feels a wistful sort of regret. There is love in this, this loud and sweaty struggle, and sometimes he thinks that this love must have been returned, once. When the Dwarf's touch calls into his own flesh some dim and distant echo that he could almost say was pleasure. When this happens, he tightens the grip of his legs and tries moaning into the Dwarf's ear, hoping for more of that vague memory, hoping that if he only tries he will remember, that if he pretends it hard enough it will become real. The Dwarf always answers with such desperate urgency, such noises as if he were even in pain, but for him the need is brief and then it passes. The memory drifts away from him as his memories always do, and he's left waiting for the hot spurt that means he can sleep.

He lies there on his back, with the Dwarf's snoring in his ear and the Dwarf's heavy, hairy arm over his chest and the Dwarf's love leaking from his arse. He thinks, as the Dwarf turns his head and his skin is chafed by the Dwarf's beard, of the den and the bear and her two bear children, the heat and the fur against his skin and the raspy tongue that licked the rose hips from his hair. He thinks, _I am not a bear._ He thinks, as the Dwarf shifts in his sleep and that heavy, calloused hand tightens and loosens and tightens again on his arm, of the herb garden and Father's pipe and Mother singing as she hung the washing and Bard's wondering face as he plucked a single white flower from his blooming hair. He thinks, _I am not a Man._

He thinks of that last time the Dwarf let him go outside. The air was so sweet and fresh, full of the wet and the green, air that lived and breathed on the skin. Everything had shined. He doesn't remember how he got away from the Dwarf, only that he did, and then he was in the herb garden, where the rosemary was blooming. There between the fennel and the roses he broke apart the topsoil and dug down into the loamy dirt, first with his fingers and then, when it became deeper, with his ruined, hideous feet. He dug and dug and dug, not minding when his nails broke, and the hole was only just becoming big enough that he could fit the whole of himself into it when the Dwarf found him. Caught a hold of his hair and arms and legs and dragged him out. Held him up and shouted _What are you doing._

Carried him away, his bloody hands wrapped and tied, Mother crying at the door, and him saying _No, please, please let me stay. I'm not ready. It's too early. I'm not ready. I shouldn't be here. Please let me stay. I'm not ready._

The Dwarf says he isn't well. The Dwarf says he must stay where it's safe. The Dwarf says that he can't be lost again, the Dwarf couldn't bear it. The Dwarf says that when he is better, they will have a wedding. The Dwarf says that perhaps, if he can only get better, the Dwarf will take him to visit the shire someday. The Dwarf says that the Dwarf is sorry. The Dwarf says that the Dwarf never meant to hurt him. The Dwarf says they would never have buried him if they'd known.

_Poor Dwarf,_ he thinks. It must be terrible, to love someone like him. He must have been someone quite special, once, to be loved so desperately, so faithfully, even after he died. He must have been wonderful, before.

He lies awake under the Dwarf's arm and he says _I'm sorry._ He says it again, softly. And again. And again. And again.

The Dwarf's face is hot with tears. He isn't supposed to know. He closes his eyes and pretends to sleep just like he pretends he loves the Dwarf, that he knows who the Dwarf is. Only then he is really sleeping, and he dreams of being deep in the warm, living earth, asleep and safe until spring.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Echo" by Christina Rossetti.


End file.
